Ana Ramos arrived in London from Colombia when she was eleven. She quickly felt at home but would discover she had ADHD, dyslexia and dyspraxia years after having to retake her A-levels twice. With her diagnoses, she graduated from university and has worked as a paralegal and across the civil service.
Zac Liew
“It wasn’t that hard learning a new language when I came to England. I was looking forward to starting a new life somewhere else,” Ana says.
She beams as she speaks, remembering the excitement she felt landing in London.
Her positive attitude and bubbly personality meant she had an easy time making friends. Even though she was put in an all-white Catholic school and then moved to Camden, where goths with green mohawks and spiked leather trousers roamed in droves, nothing could overwhelm little Ana. If anything could hold her back it was herself, or so it seemed. Whenever she was asked to write sentences down on paper she surprised teachers by her spelling and grammar mistakes.
“I didn’t have issues talking to people, it just got hard when I had to process new information and show evidence of it in writing,” Ana says.
“I had a teaching assistant follow me around classes at school and it made me feel embarrassed. I thought it was only because English wasn’t my first language.”
She did not let this dampen her dreams in academia and went on to college to study A-Levels. She took her exams at the end of the second year, failing the first time around. She resolved to retake them in year three.
But she failed again. People tell you to rethink your ambitions the first time you fail your exams, but Ana had failed twice and if she wanted to try for a third time, it would mean she was entering the fourth year of what was supposed to be a two-year course.
In the end she took the risk and tried again. Some would call this brash, others would say it was a mark of resilience.
She passed. This earnt her a place at Buckinghamshire University where she would train to become a solicitor and make a discovery of huge dimensions in her first trimester.
“A tutor looked at a piece of work I submitted and said I might have a learning difficulty. I was like, ‘what are you talking about?’”
“They said they’d assess me for dyslexia. It was the first time I’d heard this word. My first thought was ‘how do I get rid of it? What pills do I need to take?’”
She was diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia. Ana says this was a watershed moment.
“The whole time I wasn’t stupid, as I had thought I was. I just had learning difficulties.”
But the peace did not last long.
Her duties as a paralegal in her first job after graduating had her taking notes in meetings and relaying important information that she found hard to process, especially in high-stress conditions.
“I made mistakes that got a lot attention from everyone there,” she says.
After eleven months she left, without having made anyone aware of her learning difficulties. She says it would have made a big difference if she’d had access to assistive technologies that transcribe and summarise meetings and pick up on spelling and grammar mistakes.
“I became depressed and told myself I’ll just have kids and be a stay-at-home mum,” Ana explains.
But life had other ideas. She did have children but found that she needed a job to support her family and after ten years of volunteering, helping people who had struggled to keep up with the demands of society like her, she went to look for work. She found a job in the civil service and worked her way up. Now, Ana is a Senior Policy Advisor in the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero. As part of the nuclear emergency response team, she ensures the safety of nuclear facilities and is on call to deal with any issues should they arise.
Her daughter was diagnosed with ADHD at school when she was working in the civil service and when she learned that the condition was hereditary, Ana got herself tested and the results came back positive.
It made sense. People with ADHD are born resilient, they don’t have any other choice.
(Photos supplied by the interviewee and authorised for publication)
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